Marcelline is an actress, haunted by Natalia Petrovna, the heroine of the Turgenev play A Month in the Country, that she is rehearsing, with a lot of trouble. To escape her torments she goes to the swimming pool, and swims, and listens to Glenn Miller.

At 40, she is unmarried, lives only for the theatre, and realises she will probably never have children, which heightens her anguish. She looks to communicate with those around her - living or dead: the Virgin Mary, the protecting ghost of her father seated on the family sofa, the mischievous phantom of her lover perched in a tree. She laughs and cries in turn, a nothing perturbs her, a look from her mother, or simply a kiss from the young lead in the play she is acting in.